Long Island experts expect a strong year for angel investing in 2018, mirroring national trends. One expert says he’s seeing a “historically high volume” of local firms looking to pitch to investors.

Angel investors, or high net-worth individuals as they’re known, invested larger amounts in fewer deals last year, according to the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire.

Total investments nationwide in 2017 were $23.9 billion, an increase of 12.6 percent over 2016, while the number of entrepreneurial ventures that received angel funding — 61,560 — was down 4.4 percent, according to the center’s data.

There are good deals to be had for angels, although they appear to be paying slightly more for them, he says. The higher valuations could reflect more competition for fewer deals, he says.

While local statistics weren’t broken out, New York and Boston are “two major centers of startup activity and angel investing,” says Sohl.

On Long Island, experts said activity mirrored the national report’s findings, with larger amounts invested in fewer deals.

Members of the Long Island Angel Network, who invest in early-stage companies, provided more than $5 million in funding to companies in 2017, slightly higher than in 2016, estimates LIAN board chairman Michael Faltischek, a founding partner at the Ruskin Moscou Faltischek law firm in Uniondale. Most of those were “follow-on investments”— meaning investments in early-stage firms that are further along in their business models and may have started producing some revenue.

That follows the trend in the national report’s findings: The percentage of angel investments in companies in the seed and startup stage was identical in 2016 and 2017, at 41 percent, but angels increased their presence in early-stage investing to 41 percent of investments, up from 31 percent in 2016.

Faltischek says he is “ambivalent” about the local investment outlook for 2018, noting he’d like to see more “quality” opportunities for seed investment locally in order to attract more angels. He says he is meeting with local research institutions and universities to gauge future opportunities for commercialization of technologies.

Meanwhile, Neil Kaufman, chairman of the Long Island Capital Alliance and managing member of Kaufman & Associates law firm in Hauppauge, says he’s seen a good crop of firms presenting at LICA’s quarterly forums, where companies pitch to potential investors.

“We’ve seen a high quantity of high-quality local companies at all stages,” he says, noting LICA has been receiving a “historically high volume of applicants” to present at its forums.

Kaufman says he expects 2018 to continue 2017’s trend, with a strong volume of applicants and activity.